Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

Religion & Politics

Science blogs

EVENTS

Secular Woman is a new organization formed to “amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women.” Sounds like a great idea to me. They’re just getting off the ground, but I an optimistic that they will be a powerful voice in the secular movement very quickly. Here’s an introductory video:[Read more…]

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This video, which features a crazy, bigoted street preacher telling at a gay pride event in Cleveland that being gay leads to cannibalism, is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that it was put on Youtube by someone with the nickname OnKneesForJesus. Mr. Freud, call your office.[Read more…]

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Steve Crampton and Harry Mihet of Liberty Counsel sing the praises of that abysmal Mark Regnerus study on gay parenting and claim that “true science” will always “reinforce and strengthen what the Scripture tells us from the start.”[Read more…]

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At the CFI conference last weekend, I finally got to meet Jessica Ahlquist in person. And since I was wearing my t-shirt that pays tribute to her, in a sense, Brian Engler had to get a picture of the evil little thing and the evil big thing together.[Read more…]

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At the CFI Leadership Conference, Jamie Kilstein did the whole routine that he did at the Reason Rally and it was as brilliant the second time as it was the first time. Someone told me they were standing backstage next to Richard Dawkins and he was just dumbfounded by the whole thing, that he had no idea what was funny about this. I think it’s hysterical, especially this line: “If you are over 60 years old in the Senate, you should not be allowed to vote on the environment. You don’t get to vote to destroy the planet and then die before the place burns to the ground. That just makes you a really slow suicide bomber.”[Read more…]

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The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department says it is changing the prayers it uses during police ceremonies to make them “non-sectarian.” What does that mean? It means no more “in Jesus’ name” at the end, apparently. That has the wingnuts up in arms, of course, but it’s still a bad idea.[Read more…]

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Unhinged crazy person and former Gen. Jerry Boykin says that Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Arab (not necessarily Muslim) population outside the Middle East, is ruled by Sharia law and indistinguishable from Beirut or Damascus (as though those two cities were the same, for crying out loud).[Read more…]

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Wow. Will Wilkinson wrote thisbefore the Supreme Court’s ruling on the health care insurance mandate was released and it pretty much nails exactly what happened. I said at the outset that I wouldn’t be shocked if they upheld it under the taxing power, but I certainly didn’t come this close:[Read more…]

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ThinkProgress has a list of the seven most virulently anti-gay members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The one amazing thing about it is that neither Michele Bachmann nor Steve King are on the list. Imagine how bad you have to be to outrank those two![Read more…]

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Paul Campos, a law professor at UC-Boulder, notes that the dissenting opinion in the health care reform ruling strongly suggests that Chief Justice John Roberts may have switched sides, originally voting to overturn the mandate and then switched and decided to uphold it.[Read more…]

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Foreign Policy magazine looks at a new study from a pair of Harvard scholars that concludes that the more food aid we send to troubled countries, the more violence in those countries increases — largely as a result of trying, successfully, to steal the food.[Read more…]

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A group of social scientists have released a defense of Mark Regnerus’ terrible study on gay parents, but that response only shows how bad the arguments in favor of the study are. Some of them, in fact, are astonishingly hypocritical. To wit:[Read more…]

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This website reports on a recent speech by the CEO of one of the world’s biggest defense contractors whining about the entirely mythical “sudden and serious cuts” that the sequestration deal, which almost certainly isn’t going to happen anyway, would make in defense spending.[Read more…]

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The owners of the Worldnutdaily apparently don’t think they look dumb enough for giving weekly columns to Pat Boone, Chuck Norris and Victoria Jackson. Now they’ve added John Rocker to the list (for at least as long as they think it will sell some of his books that they get a cut of). And he apparently thinks that failed prosecutions have something to do with “big government” (a tired marketing slogan if ever there was one).[Read more…]

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The cesspool that is right wing talk radio continues to get worse and more toxic. Wingnut radio host Jan Mickelson noted that a group of nuns were going to Washington, DC to protest against the Ryan budget and he asked a sitting congressman whether he could arrange to have them pistol whipped.[Read more…]